


She Turned To Me

by 912luvjaxlean



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Episode: s02e12 Unnatural Habits, F/M, Internal Conflict, Jack's Thoughts in the Car, No head injury, Resolution and Acceptance, Yielding to Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 21:44:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/912luvjaxlean/pseuds/912luvjaxlean
Summary: Jack returns to his marriage in his reveries and experiences unintended emotions for both his former wife and Phryne. Sometimes comfort is not a physical thing.





	She Turned To Me

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt was 'unconscious'. Though tempting, I felt poor Jack didn't need another concussion. But, I still wanted to whump him. I looked at what can be meant by the word 'unconscious' and found a way to get to him. There is acceptance, resolution and yielding to fate at the end. That is the comfort here.

She turned to me. And, I remembered us. How we once took long walks upon the front and planned our future. Together. My mind in memory swept me away.

Subliminally I heard a brass band playing popular tunes. There was that gazebo in the park, we stayed out past dark. I stole a kiss or three heedlessly. We ambled along the High Street and window shopped for furniture. We stopped in front of Melbourne’s finest jewelry store and chose a ring. We were young. In love. We were engaged. Naturally, I promised her a bigger diamond someday. We married. And, clung together in passion, in pleasure, in plans.

How we planned -- for a family, for property, for advancement. How she inspired me to ambition and accomplishment. I felt safe, secure, unafraid, in the cradle of her love. Trapped in the tangle of our legs, two became one. I traded my separate self to couple. I was young. In love. I was married. I would make my mark and make her proud of me. I would give her all the things she wanted, someday. We never planned for war.

Perhaps she was lost to me the moment I chose to do my duty and serve as a soldier. Both of us believing a brief time would separate us. All through the night, we said farewell, bodies entwined and connected. No words, no phrases, no promises. Just the sounds of uncontrolled surrender, of love and lust and longing. Sweat, damp, pulsing, throbbing, living need, the depths of desire.

Perhaps she was lost to me as I gave her my all, my youth, my dreams, my seed. The sweet succor of our love making, gave me courage. I marched out to my destiny, leaving my wife standing in her dressing gown and slippers in our small kitchen. Her long dark hair swept over her shoulder in a loose braid. I went to war a newlywed.

Five years later. I watched her come onto the station platform on Sidney Fletcher’s arm. I hardly knew her. Styles had changed. She had cut her beautiful hair. The hair I used to enjoy brushing after I had taken the pins out one by one. How intimate the act.

I was leaning by a wall, waiting. She walked right past me. She didn’t recognize me. I had lost weight, I was in an ill-fitting suit, not a uniform. I said her name. And, she turned to me with a look on her face that said -- ‘Who are you?’. It was a stilted greeting, mechanical and repressed. Still, we tried to find our way back to each other again that night. And, I failed her.

We tried to pick up the pieces of a marriage that had fractures. Where once there was an us. Now there were two strangers -- a woman called Rosie, who had lived singly for five years, and a man called Jack, shell shocked soldier, KO’d by war. Still, I tried.

I tried to recall what we once had. I tried to believe that the woman she was now and the man I had become were connected. I tried to find the reasons to remain together. Children. But, my desire for her was no longer there. Desire was gone. Strength was gone. Youth was gone. I went to war a vigorous, virile young man and came back a benumbed, befuddled old one.

She couldn’t reach me from the inadvertent distance and became a bit of a nag. I found solace in work to escape the sound of her voice and her disappointment. I worked all the time, to fake ambition, to pretend an interest in life, to avoid her. I took every assignment offered. I failed her. I was never there; I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be anywhere. I just existed.

I would look at her and wonder what I had ever seen in her. I’m sure she did the same. Her voice grated on me, her opinions bored me, her inability to see what I had become and her complaining. And, there was always Fletcher waiting in the wings, richer, younger, ambitious. Never a scholarship boy was he. Never using a bicycle and working as a delivery boy and going to night school. Never working class, with one suit and two shirts. Compared to him, I looked like a failure. Perhaps I was. The marriage certainly was.

Sometime after the divorce, she turned to me. Her pretty dreams of wealth and romance had shattered when her fiance, Fletcher, and her adored father, were arrested for ‘white slavery’. Though I was the arresting officer, she reached for me in her grief. Or, did I reach for her? I comforted her and held her by resting my chin on top of her head as she curled into me. It was how we used to sleep together. When she had no one else to turn to, she clung to me in the old way.

Later that evening, she was so distraught. Clutching at me, clinging to me, crying. I tried what I could to calm her. The doctor came and gave her a sedative. I lay with her on the bed until she was unconscious. I felt torn between the then and now. I felt pulled to her and her current desperate need. I could have taken advantage of her in the state she was in. I could have given in to remembered passion as she twisted against me. My body recalled our throes of passion.

She said my name over and over. I was in unwitting jeopardy. I cared for her. Or, was it for the memories of what we once were? For what we once had, for what we had missed, for what we had lost. “Love me, Jack, love me. I need you. Don’t leave me.” Rosie begged as she turned to me. I did the honorable thing and didn’t make love with her. Though my body automatically told me to. I left her and walked out into the night. Sad to leave her. Glad to be free. It was late. Much too late for Rosie and me.

Much later that night, I sat in my car in front of Phryne’s house in a timeless state. I was detached from the past, unaware of the future. There was only the present. Memories and remorse. And suddenly unbidden, a craving, a hunger, a yearning so deep that the wave of passion stunned me. My whole being was submerged in an unconscious refrain: Love me, Phryne, love me. Fill my lonely life and empty arms. I need you. Don’t every leave me.

Rip tide? Desperation or desire? Pain or passion? What was the push and pull of it all? Not marriage, not children, not a pledge, not even a promise of exclusivity. Could one glorious night heal me, provide meaning, an answer? And, allow me to forget? What if I followed Phryne Fisher upstairs to her infamous boudoir? What if I spent tonight having her on that much used mattress of hers? Would the morning after bring relief or regret?

When I tapped with my fingers upon the glass of Wardlow’s door, Phryne heard me and let me in. I was ready to give her my all that night. To let down my guard and succumb to her siren song. Oh, how I longed to chance it in the dark and bury my past within her. Secure in the cradle of her womanhood. Unconscious of any time, but the present moment, one gaudy night. A cauldron of emotions. The alchemy of desire. The crucible of need.

Perhaps it was just as well that her Aunt Prudence suddenly appeared in the foyer and suggested that I leave. "It was late." Too late to start a benighted affair that must ultimately disappoint a man who required loyalty. As I walked out, something suppressed whispered a sad truth. If I had followed Phryne Fisher upstairs, it would have felt like infidelity. To my ideals. And, to my...my former wife who had inherently turned to me.


End file.
